Nowdays, there are more and more instances and adoptions of internet-of-things (IoT) devices for use in our everyday lives. The data gathered in real time from these IoT devices will revolutionize many industries and fields. Through data connections and interactions of billions and billions of these IoT devices, many creative usages can be brought about to everyone. Meanwhile, due to the rapid falling of hard ware costs related to launching new IoT scenarios and applications, such as microchips, GPS sensors, motion sensors, together with increased advancements in software technologies, and coinciding with massive increases in global smartphone utilization, it seems that IoT explosion is right on the horizon. Meanwhile, advanced cellular networks around the world using 4G or LTE mobile telecommunication technologies have enabled significant developments in IoT solutions as being viable profitable endeavors and combined with lowered costs and greater scalability and flexibility of data storage cloud solutions have also help to expand the reach of IoT adoptions. According to estimates from McKinsey Global institute, the potential estimated economic impact is estimated to be as much as US $11.1 trillion per year by 2025.
However, upon the eventual IoT proliferation becoming commonplace and of reality, it seem that it would be rather a tedious task for an end user to have to physically interact with each of the IoT devices in order to turn it on or off. Apart from the convenience aspect of physically turning on or off of IoT devices by users, there is also the added issue relating to hygiene, since touching the on/off pad of the IoT can also include the inadvertent picking up of germs and bacteria from previous users. Meanwhile, sometimes the IoT devices may be located in certain harder to access locations, such as for example, a smart security IoT device mounted on a 3 meter high ceiling, or a smart camera type IoT device externally installed on a 13 meter utility pole, which means that it would be difficult for a user to turn on such hard to reach IoT devices. Although it could be possible to attempt to initiate direct wireless communication to each IoT device by the user using a smart phone and wireless internet connection to reach the management system of the IoT device, however, due to fact that IoT devices lacked standardized protocols and are fragmented in implementation technologies coupled with the difficult of not knowing sufficient IoT device setup information ahead of time, thus each user may not be able to gain full access of an IoT device owned and operated by various entities without spending significant of time figuring it out.
Therefore, there is a need in providing a method and system for allowing an end user to turn on or turn off an IoT device in a contactless manner directly using a mobile phone camera light source and an app running on the mobile phone.